So,how did the MIDI standards decline in modern operating systems?

But...but...the SC-55 can use a MIDI to USB interface just fine, and this directly contradicts what you were saying earlier, where you were talking about switching synths on the fly for some bizarre reason. What do you want out of a MIDI setup? What are you trying to accomplish? Are you even old enough to have money to spend on stuff like this or are these the idle fantasies of a small child?

Price matters.

You mentioned the Roland UM-ONE, that's why.

I am old enough to have money to spend on stuff like that.

Do these external hardware devices play nicely with using headphones?  I see that the Sound Canvas models have a headphone jack on them but if it's a separate output than sound effects would be coming from I could imagine that getting tricky.

I use an RCA to 3.5mm adapter to feed the output from the Sound Canvas into my computer's line-in jack.

I have Sound Canvas VA. It's good for composition, but it has notable audio differences and is based off a later model, the 8820, so direct MIDI playback doesn't work out well. For MIDI playback, buying an SC-55 is a more viable option.

On 1/22/2018 at 9:27 AM, Woolie Wool said:

Yet you would buy Roland's Sound Canvas VA, which is almost as expensive and is vastly inferior?

I feel like "vastly" is overselling the differences a bit here. The SC-55 is better if you want absolutely no compromises, to be sure, but I still found SCVA to be a worthwhile investment, if only for the ability to use the extra instruments the SC-88/-88Pro/-8820 used (which, I should stress, is more for listening to random MIDI files that I know for a fact use them and absolutely not for DOS gaming, since pretty much no DOS game does use them). The synth strings sounding different didn't really bother me enough. (That said, I also have a physical CM-500 to cover my need for an authentic SC-55 should I absolutely need one...)